Don't Stop
This is easily Fleetwood Mac's best album and a welcome addition to any collection. That said, this album requires some "work" to adjust to. It's not what one would expect from the Mac, and is filled with quirky songs and challenging arrangements. Stevie Nicks delivers one of her best collections of songs here. "Sara" remains a pop masterpiece of complex music and arrangement. It's tragic that Warners still hasn't remastered this disc to include the entire song. The best song here (and Stevie's best ever) is "Beautiful Child", a simple, plaintive ballad that builds in delicacy to a call-and-response conclusion that is simply stunning. While "Sisters of the Moon" seems overly familiar now, due to the recurring themes of Stevie's later songs, it's still a stunner of a song. Christine McVie supplies her dependable songs and stylings, the best of which are "Think About Me" and the gourgeous "Over and Over". While Lindsey Buckingham could certainly afford to lose a few of his songs ("That's All For Everyone" and "Save Me a Place" just have to go) he has some definitely interesting work here. "The Ledge" is a quick, jolting wonder, and "Not That Funny" is both an odd and riveting punkish rave-up. Of course, the song "Tusk" is one of the most unusual pop songs in the history of music (it reached #8 on the charts) and is alone worth the price of admission. Overall, the arrangements are original and intricate. You sit there wondering how this bunch ever thought up this stuff. Go get "Tusk". You'll get years of pleasure out of it.
Don't let
It's not pop, it's not rock, it's... Tusk? It's definitely nothing like what Fleetwood Mac had recorded previously or has recorded since. This is the one album where you can see Fleetwood Mac go outside the usual pop-rock template. What it lacks is normalcy. What it gains is brilliance. Tusk showcases some fascinatingly weird Lindsey Buckingham tracks ("The Ledge", "Not That Funny"), among them the title track, "Tusk". Without a doubt "Tusk" is one of the strangest, but best songs I have ever heard, with a marching band, spoken lyrics, and background voice (some of you might remember the live version on "The Dance", keep in mind that the original is not too similar). Christine McVie contributes several songs that are as good or better than usual, including the album's opener, "Over & Over". The album is also the source of a few Stevie Nicks favorites, "Sisters of the Moon", "Storms", "Beautiful Child" (one of my favorite Nicks songs), and "Sara". One endless point of dispute regarding this release of the album has been the edited version of "Sara". I agree, once you're used to the original, you're never quite the same listening to the edit. Don't let that stop you, though! The rest of the album is such an amazing artwork that it is worth buying despite the flaw. Another small flaw is on the cover. It is an endless source of both fascination and frustration why there apparently is always some need to mar album covers with advertising. This one happens to have "2- Record Set on 1 Specially Priced Disc" written toward the bottom of the cover. The extra ad campaign does not detract signifigantly from the album, and I maintain that it's definitely worth buying. Though, if those problems are too much for you, there is hope. Warner Bros. Records has plans to release another version of "Tusk" , with, I'm told, the full version of "Sara", and judging by the pictures on Amazon.com, sans lettering.
Let's set the scene: It's 1979. 2 years ago, Fleetwood Mac had released "Rumours." A riveting musical soap opera, it topped the charts for 31 weeks, sold 12 million copies at the time (19 million to date) and launched 4 MONSTER hit singles. The group (actually, it was probably more just Lindsey Buckingham) decided to do a complete 180. The result was "Tusk." This album probably had more hype surrounding it when it came out than any other album ever made at that point. It debuted strongly, but only peaked at #4. After this, it didn't last long, burning out at 2 million copies. What was going on?
One: 1979 was an infamously slow year for album sales.
Two: The double-album was priced at an expensive-for-the-time $16.
Three: A national radio station played the album in it's entirety, so anyone with a recorder could get it for free.
Four: The album was nothing like Rumours, and people "didn't get it."
While all of these probably had to do with it, the fourth reason is probably the most relevant in this case, which is a shame, because this album is better than "Rumours."
Lindsey Christine and Stevie push their boundaries on this album to excellent results. Sara is a gem, but I DO reccomend just downloading the original version. Christine still offers her pop-flavored music, but it has more depth here. Lindsey is just cracked out and it shows on his songs. But then, the songs are all good.
I have this album on vinyl and CD. I love the "sleeve within a sleeve within a sleeve" concept. The collages and conceptual photographs also make for interesting art. And what is with the dog?
Very few artists have the guts to follow a massive album with a totally non-commercial follow-up. Alanis Morissette did this with Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, which is Tusk 19 years later. Supposed is a great album, which I also reccomend. But Tusk is a star because it was experimental, honest, raw, and it was totally ahead of its time. Buy it. It may take a few listens to warm up to, but it's something that demands attention and gives so much back to the listener.
Sara
Although not as consistently wonderful as "Rumours", it is, nonetheless, an essential recording to have by this band.
It was probably not an easy thing for Fleetwood Mac to attempt to follow up the megasmash Rumours, which sold 17,000,000 copies in the US alone. That album was a painful, deeply personal work crafted in the wake of two relationships in the band crumbling. The band could have taken this approach again, a tactic that might have been too much for the listener. They could also have gone back to the brighter pop of the self-titled album, a move that might have pleased many fans. They didn't really do either. Instead, they took a route that too few successful bands take: they pushed the envelope to make something that was different. So different that it risked alienating many of the 17,000,000 Rumours-buyers - and that's exactly what it did, going multi-platinum but with only a fraction of Rumours's sales.
In the ensuing years, Tusk has not enjoyed the reputation that Fleetwood Mac or Rumours has had, and that's a shame, because the album is easily as strong as those two albums, although it's quite different from them. Tusk has on more than one occasion been compared to the Beatles' White Album, and that's an apt comparison. Both albums are eccentric and fragmented, and on each, the band members (at least the ones that write songs) come through as very distinct, individual personalities, much more so than on previous albums. With both albums, it takes a few listens for the entire puzzle to fit together (one can only imagine the reaction Tusk got when thousands of Rumours fans put it on the turntable for the first time).
Tusk starts out with Christine McVie's "Over and Over", a pretty ballad that is very much in keeping with her previous work. Following that is Lindsay Buckingham's "The Ledge", a bizarre fuzz-toned rocker that sounds like it belongs on an entirely different album, produced by an entirely different band. This dynamic continues throughout most of the album, with Buckingham's paranoid, often dissonant songs (title track, "What Makes You Think You're the One") providing an interesting counterpoint to McVie's pretty declarations of love ("Think About Me", "Honey Hi") and Stevie Nicks' earthy songwriting and occasional mysticism ("Sara", "Sisters of the Moon"). What results is an album that will not be for everyone's tastes, but one that is rewarding for those willing to invest the time in it.
It's not easy listening, but it's fascinating listening. While Tusk may not be the perfect song cycle that Rumours was, it's still a compelling listen that has the power to surprise with its creativity and weirdness even twenty-five years later.
A liner portrait of the big Mac, then coming off the commercial bonanza of Rumours, shows them looking anxiously at guitarist, singer, songwriter, and de facto auteur Lindsey Buckingham, a moment given weight by the sprawling ambitions behind this 1979 double album. Buckingham's superb sense of pop craft had catapulted the once blues-based rockers into multiplatinum ubiquity, and he responded not with a safe return to form but with an invitation for his songwriting partners to chase their respective muses. Comparisons to the Beatles' White Album abounded and remain apt: Stevie Nicks twirls dreamily through extended variations on her crystal visions, Christine McVie turns in a reliably fine set of sunny pop-rock cruisers and tender ballads, and Mick Fleetwood and John McVie sustain their reputation as one of rock's most powerful yet deft rhythm sections. Buckingham provides the wild cards, in largely self-recorded plunges into his own skittish psyche, culminating in the massive title song, beefed up by the University of Southern California's marching band, but more cannily in dreamy music-box exercises ("That's All for Everyone") and sudden bursts of gonzo, fuzz-toned rock ("That's Enough for Me"). Better than its detractors thought upon release, Tusk was a brave platinum "failure" that actually charts where subsequent Mac and Buckingham projects would go. --Sam Sutherland
